Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell may suddenly be looking past his state's Republican primary, after a tea party-linked conservative challenger was caught speaking at a pro-cockfighting rally on Saturday.

Matt Bevin is challenging McConnell from the right, but his half-hour speech at the beginning of the rally has increased his statewide name-recognition in a way no politicians wants.

Cockfighting is an intensely controversial blood sport in which roosters' claws are sharpened and fitted with razor-sharp 'spurs' – and fight to the death while spectators bet on them.

'Matt Bevin has no credibility left whatsoever,' McConnell's press secretary Allison Moore told MailOnline. 'At this point nothing surprises us with this guy.'

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Matt Bevin, a businessman who is challenging Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in the Republican primary, spoke at a March 29 rally held by Kentucky cockfighting enthusiasts

Cockfighting is an age-old blood sport -- now outlawed -- in which roosters fight to the death, aided by finely honed claws and razor-sharp 'spurs' attached to their legs -- all while spectators gamble on the outcome

When The News Journal, a small newspaper in rural Corbin, Kentucky, first reported on Bevins' appearance at Saturday's rally, hosted by the American Gamefowl Defense Network, he insisted that he didn't know who he was speaking to.

'It was not a cockfighting rally, it was a states' rights rally,' Bevin spokeswoman Rachel Semmel told the Louisville Courier-Journal.

The pro-cockfighting group advertised its Saturday event on its Facebook page, however, as a bid to organize 'a grassroots movement to legally protect gamefowl enthusiasts.'

On Thursday the conservative businessman appeared on the Terry Meiners
radio show in Louisville, seemingly abandoning the I-didn't-know defense.

'It's
interesting,' he said. 'When you look at cockfighting and dogfighting
as well, this isn't something new. It wasn't invented in Kentucky, for
example.'

'I mean, the Founding Fathers were all – many of them – very actively involved in this and always have been.'

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'Cockfighting
is illegal in all 50 states, and is illegal in 41,' a shocked Mika
Brzezinski said Thursday on MSNBC's 'Morning Joe' program. 'It's also
really sick.'

McConnell will have an easier time in
the Republican primary against an opponent who is now linked to the
illegal practice. But in November he will need every vote he can muster
against Kentucky Attorney General Alison Lundergan Grimes, a Democrat
with whom he's running neck-and-neck.

The scenario of a razor-thin margin in the general election could make even cockfighters' votes critical.

Craig Davis, president of the United Gamefowl Breeders Association, told the Lexington Herald-Leader in February that his group could swing as many as 60,000 voters toward McConnell – or tell them to stay home on Election Day.

McConnell (C) leads Matt Bevin, his tea party challenger, but will face a tougher fight in the general election, making every vote -- even those of cockfighters -- critical; the lobby is furious with the senator for approving a Farm Bill that mad it a federal crime to attend an animal fight

Vicious: Before a cockfight, birds' claws are sharpened and 'spurs' -- pointed puncture-weapons -- are attached to their legs in order to make their attacks more lethal in the ring

Tradition? The University of South Carolina still proudly cheers on sports teams whose mascot is the 'Gamecock'

Cockfighting is illegal in all 50 states, but Kentucky is one of nine states where it's not a felony. Penalties there for participating can include one year in jail after a Class A misdemeanor conviction. Spectators can expect only modest fines.

But the 2014 federal farm bill, which McConnell supported, added time behind bars for merely attending a cockfight anywhere in the U.S.

Animal fight spectators can now land in federal prison for up to one year. 'Knowingly' bringing a child under 16 to any such event is now a federal felony that carries a penalty of up to three years.

'This will destroy Mitch McConnell in Kentucky,' Davis said in February after President Barack Obama signed the bill into law.

The lobbying arm of the Humane Society
of the United States, the nation's wealthiest animal rights group, is
calling for Bevin to abandon his campaign.

He
'showed appalling judgment in associating himself with this band of
lawbreakers and perpetrators of unspeakable animal cruelty,' Humane
Society Legislative Fund president Michael Markarian wrote on his blog.

'He’s brought discredit upon the state of Kentucky, and he should withdraw from the Senate race.'

Fighting roosters are kept in dozens of states for underground matches, even though the practice is illegal in every state; Kentucky is one of just nine states that have not made participating in a cockfight a felony

Kentucky has a thriving community of cockfighting enthusiasts who insist that their hobby should be legal, and gather often -- in open meetings like this one in London, Ky. -- to show strength in numbers and pressure legislators

United Game Breeders Association president Craig Davis said in February that Sen. Mitch McConnell's vote in favor of a Farm Bill that turned attending a cockfight into a federal crime will 'destroy' him in Kentucky

Markarian is himself a controversial figure.

In
2009 a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit against the Ringling brothers
circus, saying among other things that Markarian's group – then called
the Fund For Animals – paid thousands of dollars to the star witness in
the case.

The judge ultimately ruled that the witness was 'a paid plaintiff.'

The
Humane Society of the United States has an image problem in Kentucky as
well, since it raises tens of millions of dollars every year with ads
suggesting it's related to local 'humane society' shelters, but spends
much of that money advocating for vegetarianism and other positions that
make livestock farmers bristle.

Semmel, Bevin's spokeswoman, did not respond to a message requesting comment.

McConnell has hammered his tea party opponent in ads focusing on his 2008 defense of the federal government's unpopular $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program bailouts of Wall Street investment firms.

'Matt Bevin will say whatever he thinks people want to hear in the moment to try and make a quick sale,' Moore, the McConnell spokeswoman, told MailOnline.

He 'claims to be a conservative business man but takes taxpayer funded bailouts for his uninsured business and supported TARP,' she said, 'claimed to have an MBA from MIT when he never even attended the school, and now he claims he didn't know he was giving a speech to cockfighters at a cockfighting rally.'